4:00 AM. I used to have a joke about this time of morning. “You know why there are so many babies in Tooele lately?” I asked a neighbor once. “The water?” they responded. “No. It’s the 4 AM train,” I replied. “How so?” said they. “Well, you know, the train going by wakes you up. It’s too early to get up, too late to go back to sleep… what’re you gonna’ do?”
Well, here I am at 4 AM. I hereby nominated 4 AM for the “Armpit of the Day”. The real hard partyers all went to bed two hours ago. The hard workers have at least another half-hour or hour to sleep before they’re up for the day. The hard sleepers have another 3 or 5 hours to go yet before they’re up.
The tattoo-to-customer ratio down at Wal-Mart goes way, way up, as does the “generally scary people” quotient.
The sobering thing is that I am numbered amongst that “scary people” bit. It’s just a smelly time of day. The air lingers, heavy and thick like fumes over a garbage dump, waiting for the morning breeze to blow them away.
On the flip side, I’d call 3 or 4 in the afternoon the “Back” of the day: the traditional time at which you might take a nap, or ease back in your chair to read some email and get ready for the stretch to quitting time. For the night-shifters like me, that’s the time of day when sounds and smells begin permeating your existence, slowly drawing you toward wakefulness and preparation for another hard, long night.
It’s break time at work. That’s about the only redeeming feature of the Armpit of the Day. Maybe I’ll go hit Wal-Mart and act like a scary person.
Hmm
Frankly, I think it says something about the culture of Tooele that the “real hard partyers” are in bed by 2 am. In New York, the hard partyers are just getting starting then. 😉
— Ben
Lack of entertainment
It boils down to a lack of entertainment. In a town of only 27,000, the only things open at 3 AM are Wal-Mart and Macey’s (a grocery store).
That’s it. I need to open an all-night dance club in Tooele. My guess is the time from opening to becoming a new “failed business” would be about 30 days.
(No college or university in town, no nightlife to speak of…)
—
Matthew P. Barnson